Don't be
surprised to see homemakers and female golfers huddled en masse at your local newsstand, mourning the latest glossy casualties. As the publishing industry grapples with an economic recession and
sinking ad pages (down 3.1 percent during the first half of this year compared to 2007,per the Publishers Information Bureau), it's not just big-name mags that are shaking in their boots, it's
the niche pubs, too. This year saw the end of
Quick & Simple and
Golf for Women. You can also kiss your bimonthly dose of
American Jewish Life goodbye, dear readers. And
The New York Sun - something like the Pabst Blue Ribbon of city dailies with its resurrected '50s logo - breathed its last on Sept. 30, in the wake of reporting about the week Wall Street
itself was taken off life support. In the case of Hearst's
Quick & Simple, which closed in July despite ad pages up 53.1 percent earlier this year, the company said
"significantly escalating paper costs" were a touch prohibitive in cranking out an affordable weekly. But behold the power of the Internet - Wal-Mart moms can still find no-bake cheesecake
recipes on quickandsimple.com. And aficionados of male genitalia can just surf on over to playgirltv.com (or most of the Internet, really) after
Playgirl takes its last breathy sigh in its
January/February 2009 issue.